The oldest "Moroccan" military forces are those of the
Mauri Berber Kingdoms from around 225 BCE. The Moroccan army has existed continuously since 1088 during the rise of the
Almoravid Empire in the 11th century. During the protectorates period (1912–1955), large numbers of Moroccans were recruited for service in the
Goumiers and
Regulars regiments of the Moroccan
Army of Morocco (
French:
Armée de Maroc). Many served during
World War I. During World War II more than 500,000 Moroccan troops (including
goumier auxiliaries) served with the
Allied forces in North Africa, Italy, France, Germany and Austria. The two world conflicts saw Moroccan units earning the nickname of "Todesschwalben" (death swallows) by German soldiers as they showed particular toughness on the battlefield. After the end of
World War II, Moroccan troops formed part of the
French Far East Expeditionary Corps engaged in the
First Indochina War from 1946 to 1954. The
Spanish Army also made extensive use of Moroccan troops recruited in the
Spanish Protectorate, during both the
Rif War of 1921–26 and the
Spanish Civil War of 1936–39. Moroccan
Regulares, together with the
Spanish Legion, made up Spain's elite
Spanish Army of Africa. A paramilitary
gendarmerie, known as the "Mehal-la Jalifianas" and modelled on the French goumieres, was employed within the Spanish Zone. The Royal Armed Forces were created on 14 May 1956, after the Franco-Spanish Protectorate was dissolved in 1955. 140,000 Moroccan personnel from the French protectoral army and 90,000 from the Spanish protectoral army Forces transferred into the newly formed armed forces, this number was augmented by approximately 15,000 former guerrillas from the "Army of Liberation", About 2,000 French and Spanish officers and NCOs remained in Morocco on short term contracts until the training programs at the military academies of St-Cyr, Toledo and
Dar al Bayda produced sufficient numbers of Moroccan commissioned officers. Four years later, the
Royal Moroccan Navy was established in 1960. The Moroccan military's first engagement as an independent country in the 20th century was the
Ifni War, followed by the
Rif revolt, and then
the border war of 1963 with Algeria, In the early 1960s, Moroccan troops were sent to the Congo as part of the first multifunctional UN peacekeeping operation
ONUC, The Royal Moroccan Armed Forces fought on the Golan front during the
Yom Kippur War of 1973 (mostly in the battle for
Quneitra) and intervened decisively in the 1977 conflict known as
Shaba I to save Zaire's regime. After Shaba II, Morocco was part of the Inter-African Force deployed on the Zaire border, contributing about 1,500 troops. The Royal Moroccan Armed Forces also took a symbolic part in the
Gulf War among other Arab armies. Between 1975 and 1991, the Moroccan Armed Forces fought a
16-year war against the
POLISARIO, an
Algerian backed rebel national
liberation movement seeking the independence of
Western Sahara from Morocco. From the mid-1980s on, Morocco largely managed to keep POLISARIO troops at bay by building a huge
sand wall, staffed by an army roughly the same size as the entire Sahrawi population, enclosing the
Southern Provinces within it. The enclosure contained most of the economically useful parts of Western Sahara, including
Bou Craa,
El-Aaiun, and
Smara. The Moroccan army destroyed all the posts created by the Polisario and won decisively the majority of battles, but artillery strikes and sniping attacks by the guerrillas continued, and Morocco was economically and politically strained by the war. In the 1990s, Moroccan troops went to Angola with the three UN Angola Verifications Missions,
UNAVEM I,
UNAVEM II, and
UNAVEM III. They were also in Somalia, with
UNOSOM I, the U.S.-led
Unified Task Force (UNITAF), known by its U.S. codename of 'Restore Hope' and the follow-on
UNOSOM II, They saw fighting during the
Battle of Mogadishu to rescue a U.S. anti-militia assault force. Other peace support involvement during the 1990s included
United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in Cambodia, and the missions in the former Yugoslavia:
IFOR,
SFOR, and
KFOR. On 14 July 1999, the Moroccan Armed Forces took part in the Bastille Day parade on the
Champs-Élysées, which was exceptional for a non-French armed forces, at the invitation of then French President
Jacques Chirac. ==Branches==